Cruise 7 of 14: July 4 - 11

Update 7/14/07: I purchased an 80 gig portable HD yesterday at Fred Meyer for $20 more than buying a 4 gig flash drive. So I will now be able to transfer off the photos and add more to my hard drive as I take them. Yay! This week has been terrible for weather. If the rainforest we are in could thunderstorm it would be doing that. So, today is a perfect day for working on photos from weeks past :) Have a great day.

Important note 7/13/07: I don't have any pics this week yet because my hard drive is completely full and I don't have a DVD burner to take photos off. I brought CD's to burn but am discovering that I've been so gung ho on photo taking that each day has between 250mb to 2.1gig of content and I've got 7 weeks worth on this computer so far and a whole week still sitting on the camera. I've got to figure out how to get them safely off my computer and to secure storage so that I can continue to take pics in these upcoming weeks. Yikes! No worries though, Juneau is supposed to rain again this week as is Skagway so I'm not too worried about getting out with the camera anyway unless I do an excursion. We'll see. I need to find a portable hard drive or something so that I can burn these folders to DVD or something, I don't know. It's so tricky in AK when I can't just run to Circuit City to pick up what I need and ordering takes so long to actually get the item at some port in the future. Yikes.

Wednesday July 4th: Vancouver, B.C.

Happy Independence Day! We are in Canada today, but thankfully the ship is still decorated really nicely for the 4th!! I have 55 tweens this week on board, so it’ll be interesting to see how many of them come to programming.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long to see that I did too good of a job promoting myself on the gangway to the kids. By quarter to eight this evening I had 22 kids waiting to break down the doors and pile in. That hopefully isn’t a sign of things to come.

Our new staff member is having a hard time adjusting to ship life so we’ll have to see how long he lasts. We did have a couple of entertainment staff crew come up to play with us tonight and I’m SO GLAD they were there. With the combo of my kids and the little kids we had over 30 in the tween room for the welcome aboard party. Yikes! That’s all I can say is YIKES!

Thursday July 5th: First Sea Day

The seas were quite calm today so I felt fine this morning for activities. It was good not worrying about feeling ill while having so many to program for. A bunch of them slept in, but I still had at least 12 off and on, maybe more, I forget. The new guy had a safety meeting and some other meetings that he was supposed to be at today, but he missed them and it’s looking like he may actually be disembarking tomorrow. We thought we were desperate for staff, but maybe not so desperate after all.

These kids this week are very loud and very hyper. I am trying to get their attention for games and such and they simply sit there and talk to each other with their backs turned and ignore me. I’m really glad that they all made friends, but I’d appreciate a little respect as well. We’ll see how the week pans out.

Tonight’s theme: Top Secret Assignment was a disaster. The photo scavenger hunt had so many kids participating that I broke them up into 4 teams in the fairest way I knew how, but because they didn’t pick their own teams they were miserable and taking it out on each other. They screamed while out and about the ship, went running through the library multiple times, etc. The Chief Security Officer and my roommate had to talk to them multiple times. Because of their bad behavior I’m going to have to cancel all of the rest of the fun scavenger hunts for the rest of the week because they can’t seem to handle themselves unsupervised. Oh and I almost forgot, to make the night even better -- about 4 of my boys tonight on two different teams got beat up by two teenagers while on the scavenger hunt. Of course that went over well with all of us and especially the parents of the boys. I felt terrible that that would happen while they were signed into my care, but unfortunately there wasn’t anything that I could have done to prevent that. The parents are mad at the boys and disappointed with me. I did tell them to contact security and file a report, because they will be better equipped to bring the culprits to justice if we can track down who they are. I didn’t see them, so hopefully the boys themselves will point them out to an adult as they see them around the ship.

Friday July 6th: Tracy Arm, Juneau, AK

At the end of our morning programming Liz and I went to hang with Steve in the Loft for a moment as he was finishing up a movie with the teens. As I was sitting there a boy with longish hair came in with a plate of fries and another boy came in a moment later and stood next to the post I was sitting against. All of a sudden one of the moms of my tweens that got beat up last night runs in and points out these two boys as the ones that did the beating. We now have our culprits and they will be dealt with accordingly.

Our staff member left today without so much as a goodbye. We are not too sad to see him go to be quite frank. I hated that it didn’t work out, I want everyone to have a chance to prove themselves, but in this case it is for the best that he left sooner than later. Now we can calm down and get back to work.

The weather was rainy again, so I didn’t get off the ship. I wanted to go up Mt. Roberts tramway or go to Mendenhall Glacier but with the bad weather I’ll save my money for a sunny (or at least not rainy) week. It was pretty foggy this week too so I wouldn’t have been able to see much. I am still exhausted this week and am napping every second that I can. I think all the drama that has happened since last Ketchikan (that I’m purposely not being too detailed about) has simply worn me out. Not to mention the really atrocious kids we have this week. I thought a few weeks back the kids were misbehaved and rude, this week tops that and then some.

Brave the Night theme night was a royal disaster. Out of 10 games we did 3 plus snack. I spent the entire night trying to get the kids attention. I simply should have given up and told them to go home for all the good my efforts were doing.

Saturday July 7th: Skagway, AK (today is 07/07/07)

Skagway was a bit overcast this morning. I got off around 10 or so and wandered around. I didn’t really have any ambitious plans today because I’m so tired and feeling burned out. I DID walk on my favorite trail and saw baby eaglets that were flying around above my head. I tried to get high enough up the hillside to see where their nest was exactly (I had a general location) but couldn’t so in the end I came back down and enjoyed watching them circle around.

By one o'clock it was blue skies and sun with high 70’s for the temp. It was a beautiful day, but windy as usual. I always have to “hang on to my hat” and also my lens caps! so that they don’t blow away in Skagway.

I tried to contact my friend Kristin today but her cellphone was now disconnected from the Davenport, IA number and I didn’t have the updated info. Thankfully her parents haven’t moved since I’ve known her so I called them to get the updated info and chatted with her dad for a bit. That was nice and then I called Kristin’s house and talked with her for a bit as well. It’s so weird that she’s back in MN close to Amee, but great too!

After calling people on the phone I went to the Kone Kompany and had a dish of real lemon sorbet that was like tart frozen lemonade in a cup. It was SO DELICIOUS! I also took a few pictures of the town as Mom and Dad have requested more building shots. I personally find building shots a little boring and touristy snapshottish, but if there is a demand I’ll try and meet it. Hopefully I’ve captured a few interesting angles to please the parentals as well as my own artistic sense :)

For the Country Carnival tonight we had over 30 kids attend the first part, but then the behavior got out of hand and so we had to ask a couple of them to leave. We had an actual playground type fist fight tonight (the kind where the kids all circle and cheer on the bully) between two brothers while Liz and I were dishing out snack around the corner. One small boy comes running over and says that so and so is crying because such and such happened. Oh dear. So the bully was kicked out of Club HAL and I’m not sorry. As soon as he left all of the older kids left as well and so by the time we actually played the carnival games there were only about 12 kids left and they had a fun time.

We found out tonight that the boys who caused all the trouble beating up my tweens have indeed been brought to justice. I don’t know all the details, but suffice it to say they had to make formal apologies to crew and kids and further actions were taken by the crew and parents. I’m glad that’s over finally.

Sunday July 8th: Glacier Bay National Park

We had a slow morning with only about 4 kids between 3-12. I’m so angry over all the bad behavior I’ve seen this week that I purposely held all of my programming in the little paint bucket room because this week’s tweens are “way too mature for that room”. Well good, then they won’t come and cause problems today on the longest sea day of our itinerary. :) I figure two can play their game. They want to disrespect me and waste my time I can play with 3 year olds and not say a word about moving back to the “big kids room”. When they act their ages we can resume programming for them and otherwise they can join the little bitties.

This afternoon was another disaster - this time due to crew mishap. We have guest entertainment and education all afternoon and one of these parties messed up their bit and actually used the F word and J#$% Ch#$% quite loudly and well pronounced right in front of the children. It was awful! When children get mad at the person and say “you shouldn’t use bad words” you know it’s bad. What else can happen this week.

Let me tell you! Three of our 4 hammocks in the teen hangout outside, the Oasis, have been ripped so that the centers have big holes in them. This causes the teens to fall out, very hard, when they swing the hammocks in full 360’s. Yep, you heard correctly, they are trying to flip each other around in full circles. Well, obviously not everyone has this much talent and so when they fall they have gotten quite seriously maimed. One girl’s eye is so bruised it has swollen almost shut and her face looks like someone beat her up. One boys arm is swollen by the elbow to midway up his arm in both directions. Where was the supervision you might wonder? Well, the geniuses that designed the Oasis didn’t provide any sort of permanent doors to this area of the ship. So, every time we kick the teens out for misbehaving (we can hear them in the paint bucket room as it’s so loud we think the ceiling will surely fall in this time) they immediately sneak back up about 10 minutes later. We have no way of blocking off the area to prevent this and spend all day chasing them away. They of course have now latched on to this fun game and laugh at us for not having control - they have taken control. It is clearly the most fun thing they can possibly think of on this glorious cruise to Alaska.

The damage to Club HAL in general is so bad (did I mention that the fire alarm got busted off the wall in the Playstation Room as well as cabinet door locks being broken clean off in the teen room?) that we are now on complete lock down and security as doing extra rounds as often as they can to try and help us out. Things are being broken, stolen, etc. at such an alarming rate I am ready to throw them off the ship tomorrow in Ketchikan. In all of my 20 cruises now to AK these are by far the worst group I’ve ever encountered. Can it get any worse?

Monday July 9th: Ketchikan, AK

Today I treated myself to a haircut in the spa. My layers were getting too long to have any lift in this temperate rain forest climate so it was time to get it chopped. I took off a good 3 inches from each layer and now it’s cute and bouncy again. Yay! My hairdresser is from Melbourne, AU and was very good at her job. I’m quite pleased.

After the haircut I got off the ship with Moira (this is her last week on board I’m SO SAD that they are leaving!!) and we walked to McD’s for a McFlurry and then I bought my Nabisco brand ginger snaps with real ginger and real molasses. I’ve tried a lot of brands this spring and believe me these are the BEST ever if you like a LOT of kick in your snaps. These things get me through the rough sea days when I normally don’t eat anything. I will have a handful of these babies and my half Bonine tablet and I’m good to go. :)

Afterwards we walked back to town in the rain, it was quite steady rain at this point, and went to a wonderful store called Ketchikandies. They have the best homemade candies and chocolate covered oreos there. So good! I bought a box of them for Liz for all the extra hard work she does for Club HAL without any remuneration of any kind. I really appreciate her so much. After buying the candy I went back to the ship. With the rain and cold it was so dark and yucky I was really tired. I went back to my cabin and ... napped of course. As if you thought I’d have done anything else. Why am I so tired? The staff member tired me out, the kids tire me out and something I haven’t mentioned until this point -- we’ve had late night baby sitting every night as well this week for a little “angel” and haven’t finished up until 12:30/1:00 am in the morning. So, I’m getting a maximum of about 6 hours of sleep at night, but usually more like 4-5 hours. That takes it’s toll when having to be so active during the day.

Tonight’s theme was supposed to be another scavenger hunt night, but the kids lost that privilege the first sea day. So, last night it was girlie movie night (to keep out all the misbehaved boys) and tonight is little kid movie night (to keep out all the older tweens in general). Again, two can play their game and I’m beating them at it without having to be mean or say a word. They have the choice to come to the “fun” activities I’m providing for them or not, and most are choosing to NOT. :) I’m SO BAD!

Tuesday July 10th: Last Sea Day

This morning we had hang time in the Loft for an hour and chilled out to some cartoons. Because the kids are now not in the habit of attending (after my antics with their schedule the past two days) we had 4 well behaved kids show up only. Awww. Then we went into the Playstation room and played for an hour (that room has been on permanent lock down since the fire alarm incident) and again not many checked in and so they missed it. Awww. I feel so bad for them :) Then they didn’t come to the cooking class they signed up for and we made such delicious snacks and got to eat them. It was a great day.

This afternoon I once again combined with Liz for activities and sure enough it kept out all the kids that definitely didn’t want to be there. Ohhhhh noooooo. For the final party we were combined in the tween room and a bunch of my kids showed up, but they didn’t get to do many games because they refused to listen. So, finally I asked a whole group of them to simply sign-out and go away because I was tired of their rudeness and it took me about 10 minutes to get them to vacate the area. They didn’t want to leave, they just preferred talking amongst themselves to listening to me. Finally they left and we finished out games, cleaned up and boogied out the door by 11:30. I plan to get to bed quickly now as I will have a little bit of time in Vancouver tomorrow to get off the ship in the AM before working gangway at 12:30 pm. The forecast for tomorrow is hot and sunny - YAY!!!! I NEED NEEED NEEEEEEEED to see some sunshine, I’m so deprived in AK overall. I am thankful that Skagway had some sun this week or I’d have gone crazy.

Well, I don’t have to deal with these kids any more. Tomorrow they’ll all be off the ship by 9:30 am and I can wash my hands of them and move on. Tomorrow will be better, it’s a new day and a new cruise with new kids. They certainly won’t be worse than this week so no worries.

I certainly hope your week was better than mine. I need to unwind and de-stress before tomorrow.

Blessings to you,
T
ps. I haven’t heard from anyone out there in a LONG time. If you’re reading this blog pleeeeeease email me. I need some fun emails to read in my “spare” time. :)
tlbuster75@gmail.com

Cruise 6 of 14: June 27 - July 4

Make sure to check out the links section on the left and click on Week 6 Photos to see the complete online collection :)

Wednesday June 27th: Vancouver, B.C.

I mentioned the goings on of this day last blog, so I won’t rehash other than to say that this week we will be running all three ages with the three of us and LOTS of kids on board!

Thursday June 28th: First Sea Day

This morning the sea was very calm for a sea day. Several of our kids stayed in their rooms because they were not well, but overall everyone was feeling well and doing good. Last night we had a large number of registrations come in for the 3-7 year olds - so far my age group only has about 9 registered - but this MORNING, oh my goodness. We had 22 of the 27 kids on board in our little paint bucket room. It was very very busy in there. I stayed in the tween room with my few because they are older and more mature than the kids have typically been and so combining with the little kids would turn them away completely this week.

I’ve been napping a lot lately trying to get over this respiratory illness that I’ve contracted. I’m on the antibiotics and today I woke up with no sore throat and I actually did have a voice. After last night I was so sore I didn’t think I would actually have a voice this morning, but praise God I did. :)

These kids LOVE arts and crafts projects. That’s great for us because we have so many of them. We have a project called fusion beads on the schedule for an hour in the afternoon today and the project lasted 2.5 hours and they still wanted more but we had to take them down to eat ice cream. While we were trying to get out the door we had even MORE registrations in the age groups. Yikes. I think kids now has 25 of 27 registered. It’ll be a very busy day and week.

Top secret assignment night (spy night) with the little kids didn’t go over too well. There were way too many of them and they were acting totally crazy. My kids went out on their photo scavenger hunt and the girl’s team couldn’t get it together. They kept getting lost and frustrated. They found 3 of 12 items whereas the 2 boys teams found 7 or 8 of 12 items. One of the girls is extremely bossy and it’ll be interesting to see how the week goes with her there.

Friday June 29th: Tracy Arm and Juneau, AK

Today is a beautiful day in Tracy Arm. The sun is shining and the air is warm. I took my kids outside this morning for an hour to burn off some energy and I loved just being out there in the nice weather looking at the glaciers in Tracy Arm. After lunch I rested for a brief bit because my nasty cold is still keeping me pretty out of it. I have just the right amount of oomph to do my job and then I fizzle out between shifts. But, I only need what I need and I’m not asking for extra. I am content.

I was able to get off the ship in Juneau and I decided to go to the Nugget Mall in the Valley and then back to Fred Meiers. I love the convenience of the express bus in Juneau and the cost can’t be beat at $1.50 per trip. The mall was small, only about 10 stores or so, but they had 3 really nice clothing stores, a Payless Shoes, a Joann’s, and a GNC. Considering this is the only mall and it is the capital of Alaska on a landlocked peninsula it was slightly shocking, but oh well - it is Alaska after all.

I walked from the mall to Fred Meier’s and it took me about 15 minutes or so to get there. At the store I discovered that it is a full grocery store as well as a full department store. The store is literally larger than the mall and has way more stuff to offer. I picked up a few snacks and I also needed a new LCD screen protector for my pocket size camera (my previous piece of plastic was all scratched so it was hard to see if the pictures were in focus or not. They had everything that I needed and the prices were only about $.50 to a dollar higher than back home. I couldn’t take the express bus back to Juneau, so I had to sit for 45 minutes on the bus waiting for it to get to all the other stops along the way, but because I’ve now ridden it a couple times I looked like a pro pulling the cord to request a stop before the driver called out my location. Yay me!

Our theme night was slightly crazy. No one even really showed up until after 9 pm, so we only got to do about 3 games, one being my favorite called mystery food. My bossy girl has been very faithful in attending and she is grating on the other kids nerves, but I do have a couple of kids that are SUPER cool. They are 10 and 11.95 (the .95 is very important to him!) and are so so cool - Dylan and Tyler. They are so gentle and helpful towards the younger kids and nice cool fun guys with kids their own age (heartbreakers for some lucky girls in the future). I wish I could adopt them, but the parents are super cool too so I don’t think they’d let me. :)

Saturday June 30th: Skagway, AK

I have IPM this week in Skagway, but the weather isn’t that great overall so I’m not going to be missing too much. I managed to trade the morning hours to my roommate so that I got off the ship until 1:15pm, but instead of getting off the ship at 8 am I slept until 9 and got off by 9:20 am. I just don’t have my energy back yet to be up and moving rigorously on port days. Hopefully soon.

I took a few pictures in Skagway and then went to the waterfall and just hung out in the woods looking for interesting picture opportunities. It was very enjoyable and brief but it was cold and very windy (go figure that I’d encounter wind in Skagway!). On my way back to the ship I saw a car wash that you could only say you'd see in a SMALL town like Skagway in the summer. :)

At 2 pm I jumped back into my day uniform and headed upstairs to put out sports equipment and then came back to my room to work on pictures and typing out this blog for last week. I lost a whole week due to lack of energy and being so ill, so sorry for the delay. I didn’t finish typing before dinner though because I had to also do a 5 pm teen activity in the Loft that no one attended. I caught up on my teen gossip magazines and then went to dinner.

Tonight was Country Carnival and if you can believe it we got even more new kids tonight. We drop off and pick up guest in Skagway that are also doing a land portion to their vacation up in Denali and we lost 4 kids and gained about 12. Most of them were all in my tween group, so now we have a full group of tweens on board that WANT to come to Club HAL.

I had after hours baby-sitting tonight as well for 4 kids, so I made $20.00 that was nice - internet card here I come! - and the kids were fun. We played UNO and Sorry.

Sunday July 1st: Glacier Bay National Park and Canada Day (celebrated like our July 4)

Happy Canada Day! We saw the sun in Glacier Bay today for the first Sunday since I arrived on board. It was warm and beautiful and I managed to snap a couple of photos, but I didn’t have my big camera so I could only zoom so far. I was thrilled to take any photos at all in sunshine though!!

Our Huna Tlingit Cultural Interpreter this week was the supervisor, Bertha, and not the new trainee. I hope we didn’t totally petrify her last week, but thankfully we did have a knowledgeable person this week and the kids really got into asking questions and such.

The park ranger, my favorite gal Adrianna, came this afternoon and it was great that the majority of kids there were actually my tweens and they seemed really into her talk and asked some really great questions. That warmed my heart :) Afterwards we had our guest naturalist Chris come up to do a sing along with the kids and they also really enjoyed that. Yay, my tweens love Club HAL. It always makes me so excited when they are having such a great time.

For movie night we actually separated the kids and tweens tonight so that the tweens could watch a little bit older aged movie. We ended up watching Cats and Dogs (where the cats are trying to take over the world and the dogs are secret agents with really cool spy gear - cute flick that I recommend for the family) but our sound system is still just as bad as last summer so we could hardly hear it. I’m going to ask Steve if next week we can change rooms for those two hours so we can watch a movie in the Loft and actually hear what the dialogue is. Hopefully he’ll agree!

We didn’t have late night baby-sitting tonight. We had thought me might and then I wouldn’t have been able to go to the Fellowship meeting. It was very interesting tonight. Mixing different denominations is very different. The theology was a little mixed up, but the spirit and intention is genuine so we all have to learn to get along and be open to each other and not judging our differences. They are really trying hard to encourage me to lead a meeting in the future, they seem to have latched on to me very strongly and feel that I would do a great job, but I keep trying to explain to them that I don’t set my own schedule and that I don’t know until a few minutes before hand if I’ll be baby-sitting or finished cleaning or anything by 11 pm. I would hate for them to count on me and not be able to follow through. I did agree to sing a solo for the praise song “Draw me Close” because if I’m not there I’ll simply sing it during a week that I am there. I don’t feel so bad about that. It was really nice fellowshipping with the other believers and I’ve starting having conversations more often now in the Lido and when they come to clean our bathrooms in Club HAL etc. It’s nice.

Monday July 2nd: Ketchikan, AK

I am so tired today after staying out late last night and being on medication. I am starting to feel a little energy return though so that is good. We docked in Ketch at 10 am, but I didn’t get off the ship until around 12 pm. I still had a good 5 hours off the ship and I WALKED. The roads in Ketch are like San Francisco or Duluth, MN. If you can imagine what I’m talking about and then stack them 3 times higher. It’s like going up a steep staircase without the stairs to help you. I walked up a road such as this and then walked along the sidewalk on the top of this bypass road so that I could see the whole Ketch valley and it was really beautiful. The day was really cloudy and would occasionally spit rain at me, but I’ve learned to take photos regardless of the weather because in AK any day that isn’t actually raining is a good day. It’s also interesting to see the interesting clouds on overcast days - they hold their own splendor.

After walking high up on the bypass I came down slowly and stopped at McD’s for a PB cup McFlurry and then set out again for another hike. This time I walked to the opposite extreme of town and went on a road that lead me to a very funny house. In their front yard they had a donkey, a goat and a shetland pony. I had to take pictures because I couldn’t believe how close I was to these animals in town in a residential area. I called out to the goat and captured a funny expression as he turned his head around. Walking past that house I took a road that I didn’t realize would lead me ALL the way back UP the mountain to the height I was at earlier in the day only this time with no access to back down except the way I’d just come. At that point it was too late to make it back to the ship and I was nervous about not making it back in time. I certainly couldn’t have walked it, but thankfully I had my trusty cell and I have the cab companies on speed dial for several of the ports and put in a call to get picked up. The friendly driver came about 10 minutes later and within five minutes I was back at the dock to board the ship with 10 minutes to spare. Whew!!! Call that cutting it close! I wasn’t ready to be fired for missing the ship, I NEED this job.

We got another new staff member today. Kind of weird to get a staff person at the end of the cruise, but he flew in to Ketch today and got on board. We’ll see how he works out. Let’s just say he isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree and literally gets lost trying to find his way out of a paper bag. Hopefully in a couple of days he’ll come around, but he has never been to college - lives with mommy and daddy - never had any responsibilities and so far only thinks of himself and no one or anything else. That doesn’t really work in this line of work so hopefully he’ll shape up.

Tuesday June 3rd: Last Sea Day

The seas were slightly large today, but nothing too horrible to handle. I’ve started taking my 1/2 Bonine Tablet the night before right before bed so that I am already medicated by morning when the seas could be swelled and rolling. That seems to be a good thing!

Cooking class went well, we had 5 kids sign up and we made delicious cheesy pretzels (soft pretzels that have the consistency of homemade biscuits), blueberry granola (great over ice cream - hot and gooey), and ice cream sandwich cookies. Yummy. :)

We had some drama in Club Hal between some staff today and everything hit the fan to the point where one person seriously threatened to get off the ship when we dock in Vancouver tomorrow. I seriously hope that doesn’t happen because I can’t run Club HAL by myself with the people we would have left. Please pray for our staff, we need some resolution of some issues. I appreciate it.

The pajama party and after hours baby-sitting were fun. We then had some crew bonding time afterwards with a few of us and we ended up staying up until 4 am. Not the best thing to do when you don’t get days off, but we needed to spend some time together. Thankfully I don’t do that every night!

Tomorrow is embark day, so I need to go to bed and get ready for the new children. :)

Hope your week was blessed and please don’t hesitate to write when you get a chance: tlbuster75@gmail.com

Luv you all,
Trish

Cruise 5 of 14: June 20 - 27th

Cruise 5 of 14: June 20 - 27th

Wednesday June 20th: Vancouver, B.C.

This morning I handled debarkation on the gangway starting at 7:30am. I didn’t mind as I am then able to get off the ship until my shift at 2:00pm. After saying goodbye to the passengers I changed clothes and went out into bustling Vancouver. It was partly sunny and in the low 70’s.
I walked up Howe St. to the mall and discovered an Orange Julius! I love their 3 Berry Blast and after last week needed a pick me up. After enjoying my smoothie I continued walking around and saw the local art museum, some native indians residing in Vancouver were also having a sidewalk sale of their handmade items. It was relaxing and I enjoyed a leisurely stroll around the city until it was time to return to the ship to get ready to work gangway at 2:00pm.

The kids tonight were quite hyper and excited to be on the ship, but different than last week’s kids. Two of our girls are Jewish and keep strict Kosher, so that will be interesting to see how we handle their food restrictions and such. I know some details of kosher, but not the specifics in depth. The younger of the two is adorable and very shy, the older is very much a show off and bossy. I think we’ll get along fine though, at heart she is a kid and just wants people to like her.

Thursday June 21st: First Sea Day

The seas today were relatively calm and the weather was nice and sunny and fairly warm for cruising at 19 kts per hour. We took the kids out on the sports court and they played tag for 2 full hours before we brought them back in. It was nice to get them out and running around.

I’ve been napping a lot due to being sick, but thankfully after naps I’m able to keep on going. With only two of us on staff I can’t stay home sick and recover, but God’s grace is sufficient and He strengthens me with just what I need for that shift to do a good job in that moment. I never have more than what I need, but I am thankful to receive just enough. It forces me to look to Him as my source of strength and remember not to rely on myself.

For our theme night tonight we had spy night. With a fairly decent amount of kids showing up we decided to split the group and send the older kids around the ship in a team and the younger ones stayed together with Liz and went around the ship looking for the same clues, but with her help they finished much sooner than the older ones. :)

Because of the high numbers and only 2 staff we decided this week to have only movies again for the teens, but unlike last week we are running the movies from 8-10pm to coincide with our Club HAL kids hours instead of during their regular 9-12am hours. This allows both Liz and myself to get home at a more decent hour instead of close to 1am each day.

Liz has now caught the bug as well as my roommate. I feel terrible to be spreading my germs, but there’s nothing I can do about it when I work and live with them so closely. I only hope they start feeling better really soon.

Friday June 22nd: Tracy Arm and Juneau, AK

Today we had a mandatory all crew customs inspection. Each department had a specified time to show up and present themselves to the custom’s officials. I got in line at 2:30pm and was done in about 10 minutes. When I got to the front of the line the agent stares you down and asks “Where are you from”, “What do you do on the ship” etc. and are somewhat intimidating. When I got to the front and said I was currently from Milwaukee, WI the agent sitting next to my “interrogator” breaks out in a big grin and says “I’m from Steven’s Point!!!”. We chatted briefly and my agent shoos me away without any other questions. I guess the other agent was vouching for my honesty! :)
No crew shore leave was granted until the conclusion of the inspection (at least 4 pm) so I decided to change into my “going ashore” clothes and take a quick nap. That was around 3 pm and I got up around 6:45 pm in time to change into my Camp Night theme wear and get upstairs around 7 pm.

So much for Juneau this week. I’m unfortunately too sick to care about getting off the ship right now.

Saturday June 23rd: Skagway, AK

I slept in this morning until 9 am and then we had a General Drill where I had to grab my lifejacket and prepare to “save the children”! Save them I did and then thankfully our Cruise Director remembered to send us to our rafts so that we didn’t go down with the ship! :) Our new captain was involved in the drill and all the crew surrounding me were astounded at how hand’s on he is. I think it’s great. He actually eats meals with the fellow crew, greets guests on the gangway during embarkation, and is highly visible around the ship. It really is a boost for crew morale as he is a very nice man and always smiles and waves at the crew.

After the drill I was tired but decided to get off the ship anyway to get a little fresh air and exercise after being cooped up since Vancouver, but really since Ketchikan. I walked on the main road towards the edge of town and stopped at the store “You say To-ma(e)-to we say To-ma(a)-to” - parenthesis added by me to help you know what it sounds like. They have great juices there and I bought a Raspberry, blueberry, lime juice bottle. It tastes like tart lemonade and I love it. It is all natural and chock full of antioxidants which I feel I need right now as well so it was well worth the expense.

I walked out of town as far as my legs could carry me and I stopped often along the way to capture wildflowers at their best. I’m running out of things to photograph, so this week I mainly shot flowers. I really enjoyed the time I spent shooting them. It has also been overcast here the past couple of weeks and today was no exception, so perfect soft lighting for shooting flowers. Landscapes and scenery are best on sunny days, but portraits and detail shots are great on bright overcast days.

Coming back in to town I called home as soon as I had a strong enough signal. The wind was proving to be to much for my poor phone so I walked as fast as I could and eventually stopped behind a 2 story building and finished the rest of my conversation in a bit of shelter from the wind.

After arriving back to town it was pretty close to the time I needed to be getting back on to get ready for Country Carnival night but I missed dinner because it was after six pm, so I stopped at my favorite deli in town and ordered a BLT to go and enjoyed it thoroughly on my freezing cold, atrociously windy walk through Skagway. The tide had come in by the time I returned to the gangway and so getting on the ship was interesting. It was blowing about 22 kts and the incline of the gangway was almost literally up and down. The stewards that kindly ask you to wash your hands upon returning to the ship were actually helping to boost people going up the ramp. My immediate thought was...why didn’t they simply open the tender platform entrance on A Deck and put the gangway there as we did in Victoria each week last summer??? It would have made too much sense I guess. Hopefully no one suffered too much stress climbing the steep ramp. Yikes!

Country Carnival was a success and the kids really loved face painting. We got a new boy tonight named Chris and he is a really fun kid. I’m glad he joined us, but his initial reaction to the group of kids was, “wow these kids are wild”. Yep, they are wild, but thankfully nice wild rather than naughty wild like last week.

Sunday June 24th: Glacier Bay National Park

Today it rained AGAIN in Glacier Bay. I really wish I could have seen the sun even once this summer in this place. It was actually so yucky today that the clouds hung about 13 feet above the water so until we got right up to the glaciers you couldn’t even see anything but the water and the bottom of the rocks at the base of the mountains. Too bad for the guests that don’t get multiple takes like me, this was their one opportunity and it was once again yucky.

Our Hoonah Cultural Interpreter this week was new and had NEVER talked to a group before about her culture. The supervisor thought our kids would be a safe way to start her career, but the poor girl was so nervous she completely clammed up and couldn’t remember anything she wanted to talk about. I felt so bad for her I kept asking her very leading questions, while looking inquisitive so the kids wouldn’t catch on, to help her remember things they’d be interesting in hearing about. :) She apologized later and thanked me for my interaction. She said that I probably actually knew more about her culture than she did at the moment but was hoping to do better as she got more practice.

We took the little ones out on the sports court to watch the calving of Marjorie and of course their attention span was about 2 minutes. So then they started running around playing tag. That was totally fine, but all of a sudden I heard a really loud boom and wondered what it was. One of the little boys grabbed my arm and said “Look there’s an avalanche over there!” Of course it was Marjorie calving big time and I missed it as I had been watching the kids. I’m so glad that he saw it though as he had told his mom that morning it was the one thing he wanted to see on this cruise specifically. That was pretty cool for him and for him to see it first made him feel really proud too. :)

The afternoon went well. We sent the older kids out on a couple of scavenger hunts and they did really well together, as there were only 4 of them and I split the boys and girls into 1 each per group.

Tonight we had movie night and the request was for the latest Disney/Pixar flick “Cars”. It’s a very cute movie and I highly recommend it for kids and adults alike. It has good messages for all ages in it.

After we finished cleaning up at 11 pm I dashed down to the Queen’s room for the International Christian Fellowship meeting. I had been invited my first week on board but hadn’t made it previously for various reasons from seasickness to after hours babysitting. I am so glad that I went. I realized that most of the really sweet guys that work in the Lido restaurant are believers and now they know that I am as well. They were so surprised but excited to see me there. It was so great to actually spend time in prayer and singing with other christians. Some of the guest were there as well and one of the guests was a Baptist minister and he gave an impromptu message. We had such a great time together. I am really looking forward to next week, hopefully I’ll be able to attend.

Most of the crew there were Indonesian and then there was a girl from Austria that works in the Spa and the Security Officer Norm and his wife Moira. The group used to be called the Indonesian Christian Fellowship until we all started showing up and now they sing in English for us and encourage us to bring any others that are believers regardless of nationality. Unfortunately I don’t know any other believers, which is why I’m so thankful to have met these people.

Monday June 25th: Ketchikan, AK

Ahh Ketchikan. It was at its best today bestowing liquid sunshine on all who came to visit. Just sprinkles though, nothing serious. I needed to get off the ship today and get some exercise, I’m once again eating way too much because it is so readily available (and I have absolutely no willpower - one of the exact reasons I’ve never tried alcohol) so I need to burn a few calories.

I walked once again all the way to Saxman Totem Village, taking pictures along the way of various wildflowers and such. It is so interesting to see the impact that the wet rain forest climate has on the structures in that city. The buildings rot so quickly and demolition is too expensive so things just become abandoned where they collapse. It’s really sad. There used to be several major business operations in Ketchikan that have since closed causing many families to relocate to other islands or the lower 48. There isn’t really any landfill in Ketchikan either for old cars and scrap metal so people tend to accumulate it in their yards. Both Ketchikan and Skagway both look run down and cluttered with junk when you go to the areas where people actually live (getting away from the glitzed up tourist areas).

The totem village was nice, I didn’t spend much time there though as my taxi driver a few weeks back had done such a nice job narrating about the poles for me. I actually knew more from that driver than I learned today. It was a good walk though and so I decided to also walk back to town. By the time I got back to town I was cold and tired so I decided to get back on the ship and take a nap before work at 7 pm.

Even though our kids have been separating for some of our activities we joined together tonight for pirate night. Most of the regulars are 8 and 9 years old and they love to play, so I knew they’d want to be pirates more than do a scavenger hunt again. They did indeed love being pirates and we had a fun evening with them.

Tuesday June 26th: Last Sea Day

The seas weren’t as rough this week as they were last week, so I had my faithful buddy Chris come running to Club HAL right at 9 am. Liz and I were shocked. We never have kids the last day until around 10:20 am and therefore we actually never intend to actually DO the activities scheduled prior to that. We had to get out the supplies and conduct the activity when, after losing an hour the night before, all I really wanted to do was veg and watch cartoons like usual. My cough has gotten very thick and my throat is very sore. I have been getting steadily worse these past couple of weeks and I don’t have the energy to do much of anything.

The day went smoothly over all and the night ended without a hitch. Funny enough, this week Liz was expecting tips from several of the different families and we were only tipped by the one family we never would have thought would do so - you just never know. I was grateful for the bit of extra that came my way as I’ve spent more time on the internet this week while not feeling well. Some people eat chocolate when not feeling perky, I surf the web. So it was well received and appreciated.

Oh, NEWS. We finally have an additional crew member coming to join us in Club HAL next cruise. His name is Steve and he’s worked on this ship before, so we are looking forward to having a functional teen program again. :) Hopefully we’ll get another staff member before too long so that there can be 2 in the kids room instead of just one. Next week our kid count goes over 100 so we won’t even be legal as HAL’s policy is 1 for every 30 kids (crazy I know).

I have late gangway tomorrow so I’m planning to get off in Vancouver and wander back up to Orange Julius. With my throat feeling this sore that’s the only thing that sounds good to me.

Hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon, but again God has given me just the exact amount of strength that I’ve needed for each and every day and I feel blessed.

I hope that you have been blessed this week as well.
'Til next week,
T

Cruise 4 of 14: June 13 - 20th

You have all been waiting so patiently for an update, and just to let you know I'll probably do them in Vancouver (Wednesdays) from now on so as to get a full week on one post -- seeing as how the free internet opportunities are slim to none on this schedule this summer. So, here is my update for the previous cruise.

Week #4 of 14: June 13-20th, 2007

I had many things to say for this particular cruise but thankfully I didn't post them. My mother taught me, and my father reminded me, that if I don't have anything nice to say I shouldn't say anything at all. So for this week I'm going to be horribly brief.

In a nutshell:
We had 50 children on board this past cruise and thankfully only about 10 of them were regularly showing up to Club HAL. They were all sick and by Friday the 15th I caught a horrible sinus cold from which I still suffer at the end of the week on this the 20th.

Because I was sick this week I didn't plan any excursions, it seems that I've been doing them about every other cruise. Instead of excursions I did some light errands, walked a little bit in town and otherwise caught up on laundry, updated some albums on Facebook, added the links feature that I promised to this blog (so that you can click on the photo albums without having to scroll for them in the weekly posts), and napped. Yep, this week I had to give in and nap.
We still have only two staff and so this cruise Liz and I worked from 8 am to 12 am and I believe that is why I became sick, so resting when I could was a blessing.

I would count your prayers a blessing, if you get a chance and think of it. It looks as though our department may remain at 2 regardless of kid counts, so I need prayer for health/strength in order to keep going strong.

I still am enjoying what I do, look forward to each day with its new adventures and try to see the world with fresh eyes and a willing spirit.

Til next week,
Trish

Cruise 3 of 14: June 6-June 13th

Cruise 2 of 14: May 23 - June 6, 2007 Cont.

Facebook link for Week 3's photo album

Facebook link for album of random photos of the Zaandam and me around the ship (will be updated throughout the summer so check back - I'll probably add a links section to this page so that you can quickly go to facebook albums without scrolling for them throughout all the posts).

Thursday June 5th: Day 7 - Last Sea Day

Today was nice and quiet overall. Hour forward always means that the kids sleep in longer. Liz mentioned that it was unfortunate that their is always a disembarkation meeting announcement from the Bridge around 9:45 am because it always wakes the kids up and gets them to Club HAL in about 30 minutes. I don’t mind because they trickle in and then we are already done by 11 am for the cooking class that meets in the movie theater with Chef Valentine.

The kids made really cute dough creations and the chef made a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” but he is from Holland and they pronounce J’s like Y’s so it was “neenya” turtle.

The afternoon also flies because we are open from 2-4, instead of 5, and then we get ready for our farewell pj party.

The farewell party was cute, the kids got along so well-- considering half of them don’t speak English. :)

Cruise 3 of 14: May 23 - June 6, 2007

Wednesday June 6th: Day 1 - Vancouver, B.C.

Today I didn’t have the opportunity to get off in Vancouver, though I didn’t mind because the weather was cold and drizzly. I get the pleasure of being a “buddy” to a newly embarking crew member who incidentally will also be my roommate. My previous roommate was only on this ship for 3 weeks and then will head on Friday to the ms Amsterdam to cruise from Seattle to Alaska for summer and then to Europe in the late fall.

I worked gangway from 11 am to 1:30 pm when my roommate Megan arrived. She is from Portland, Oregon and knows people at Corporate (always good to know people in high places). I have been taking her around to the various departments getting her situated with the security office, Human Resources, her safety meetings etc. I am glad that I was on board all last summer so that I have the answers to all the questions she’s asking me. We are so much a like it’s scary (personality wise). We are both confident and outgoing but in a friendly and non-obnoxious way and have to know what we don’t know. I think we’ll get along well.

The all aboard party this evening in Club HAL was fun. We had about 5 kids show up out a projected 23 on board, all except 1 were in the 8-10 year old range so that is GOOD! I love kids, I love tweens, but having too many kids in the tweens mix doesn’t really work well. The tweens want to be constantly active and the kids just aren’t at their same level of ability. If programming is geared for kids then the tweens won’t have fun because it’s too babyish - always a programming dilemma which way to tailor the program but if we end up this week with mostly tweens it’ll work out just fine.

Thursday June 7th: First Sea Day

Last night Megan and I stayed up very late talking about everything and anything. Neither one of us would stop talking after several times of saying “good night”...yikes! :) Hopefully we’ll not do this every night or I’ll be one very tired girl.

Today started out sunny and calm water. That made for a very pleasant first sea day. The kids came upstairs to check out Club HAL and again it was mainly tweens - YAY! We had some kids register for the week only after hearing that we’d have an activity called “raid the arcade” today where all the arcade games would be free for an hour (some cost 4 tokens or $1.00 to play so this is a huge crowd pleaser). The kids seem to have instantly bonded. Most of them are 8 and one is 10. Two of the kids are from Ireland, but have lived the past two years in Chicago. One girl is from Australia. A couple of kids are from Canada and the rest are from various places in the U.S. They are a fun group so far, hopefully the week will continue to go smoothly.

Megan is adjusting well and she has already got most of her stuff unpacked and put away. This is very impressive as it took me the whole first week to unpack. Her schedule is quite different then mine though. I only have chunks of time off in ports whereas she works every single day in blocks of time and the other block of time has off.

Tonight the ship started to rock. Quite unexpected after the beautiful weather we had all the rest of today. It wasn’t so bad that we were rocking in circles like last summer, but we are rocking forward to aft quite forcefully and I feel extremely nauseous. My stomach would be fine if only my eyes and the rest of me would match. Oh well, it’s time for bed and I did make it ok through the rest of the days activities with no incidents.

Friday June 8th: Tracy Arm and Juneau, AK

I survived last night without getting physically sick, yay!!! Thankfully today we are in the inside passage and the weather is GORGEOUS! It is sunny and beautiful in Tracy Arm, a very narrow passage between the mountains that we can cruise through and see some glaciers. The best glacier watching though is definitely in Glacier Bay.

One of the eight year old boys in my room is very difficult. He isn’t defiant, he isn’t malicious on purpose, he just doesn’t process instructions. He definitely has something going on because he behavior isn’t normal for a boy his age, he functions as someone about 4 years old instead of 8. The other kids like him though and include him in everything which is great. If they didn’t it would make for a very long week because he is quite high maintenance.

In Juneau today I took Megan to Subway and then sat with her outside the Governor’s mansion (which overlooks the valley from a pretty high vantage point) while she ate. Afterwards I pointed her in the direction of the library and then went to the info booth to inquire about taking the city bus to do some shopping. In my quest to do things that I didn’t do last year I decided to find out how to get to Costco. I knew there was one in the valley and that crew could get in for free, but last year I spent all of my time in the library updating my blog and didn’t get out much to do anything else. This year I have such a short time off in Juneau that I don’t want to waste a minute of it in the library when I really want to see what the capital of AK has to offer. So, after vehement dissuasion from the helpful info booth man about why NOT to ride the city bus (too far, too inconvenient for crew...) I smiled politely, took the schedule and went to the bus stop. The crew shuttle is $6.00 and will take you wherever you need to shop door to door. The bus is $1.50 and you have to walk 1/4 mile to Costco from the nearest stop. In good weather I LOVE to walk, will walk for hours in fact, and so I knew that I’d be fine. Hey, if I can ride the bus all over Milwaukee I think I can handle a city that has exactly 2 city buses :)

At Costco I purchased a 98 package of Nature Valley Granola Bars, that should last me a while. They cost a bit more than in WI, but that is to be expected. I took the bus back to the pier and went to work.

Tonight’s theme was Brave the Night. I love doing the food dares. The kids have to put their hand into a bowl and figure out what they are touching and they always come up with answers like applesauce and mashed fruit for salsa, raw eggs simply eludes them :)

My roommate is great, we get along really well but she is definitely a morning person timing wise and with my late night work requirements I haven’t been able to get a full night’s sleep yet this week. Hopefully we can find a happy medium between early mornings and sleep in mornings. I am getting a bit exhausted. I don’t want to hurt her feelings or offend her in any way though, because I really like her a lot - this is merely a logistics thing we’ll have to overcome together.

Saturday June 9th: Skagway, AK

Today I went on an excursion back to Jewell Gardens. Today is brilliantly sunny and HOT by Alaska standards, in the 70’s for sure. My body is now acclimated to cooler temps so I was warm (Mom, you’re probably smiling about that one!). At the gardens we had a guided tour and I was happy to see that the plants were growing in a bit compared to last time I went 2 weeks prior. After the garden tour we went into a sun room and had a tasting of different delicacies that they prepared with freshly grown plants and a cooking demonstration. That was really lovely.

After I got back from the tour I did a quick change and put on walking shoes and left the layers in my room, donned a short sleeved shirt and baseball hat and went hiking to a place told to me by my new friend Moira. It was so lovely. I met some guys from Anchorage and we were taking photos for each other, unfortunately the ones of me in the scenery didn’t turn out but hopefully the ones I took for them did. Please check out my Facebook album to see the beautiful photos I’m collecting for this week. The link is at the top of this post.

I wandered around in town very lazily and just simply enjoyed the day. I loved the sunshine, the lack of fierce winds Skagway is known for (Skagway means place of wind or Place where the wind is never the same twice). I was also able to make some phone calls to different people while sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere! I love nature and that was just the perfect end to a perfect day.

I got back on the ship in just enough time to run up to Club HAL to set up for Country Carnival. Thankfully I already had on my short-sleeved country shirt and jeans and just had to add a bandana in the back pocket and my red cowboy hat and run upstairs.

Country Carnival with this group of kids was so much fun. They are all so respectful and fun to have around that it was great. I sat and painted faces all evening and they tallied their own points for the games and they all left with prizes. Fabulous! I have about 11 regular attenders and that is an age range of 3-10 but most kids are 8 years old.

I didn’t get done painting faces until about 10:30 and so I didn’t get the room cleaned up and get downstairs until about 11:45 pm. Skagway is the furthest north so it is the port where it is still light out at 10:30 pm and so it’s deceiving about how late it is. That’s really good when I have to work so late, it keeps me more awake. :)

Sunday June 10th: Glacier Bay Scenic Cruising
Today in Glacier Bay was good and bad. Bad in that it is yucky and raining for the 3rd cruise in a row (the amazing Glacier Bay day happened the WEEK before I got on board). Any time now all the snow will be gone and my great photo opps for Glacier Bay will be done for this season. Oh well. It was really good at the same time in that we saw bears today through binoculars. One of the parents told us to come outside and see them and lent us his binoculars to look through. How exciting. We saw 2 bears on the way in to the Bay and 1 on the way out. Wow!!!! Last summer I only saw whales, porpoises and eagles and now this summer I’ve seen all of those plus sea lions and bears. I now need to see Seals, sea otters, puffins and I’ll be set. A moose and mountain goats would also be nice, but I don’t need to be greedy :)

I didn’t have Master Chef dinner tonight as I’m running the whole kids program by myself, but I really enjoyed movie night with them. We watched an animated flick called Chicken Little. Right about 10 pm a mom brought up her 4 year old for after hours baby-sitting and because it’s only me in this age group I stayed after to babysit. Thankfully I can sleep in tomorrow. The little girl’s name is Lauren and she is adorable so it was really fun to have one on one time with her. She loves to draw and read stories so the hour went really quickly.

Monday June 11th: Ketchikan, AK

I was awakened really early again this morning after not getting to bed very early last night (this morning) and so I was so saddened to find out that I was going on a really great tour. I was so tired I didn’t feel I would properly enjoy it. I ended up going to my supervisor for the Entertainment Dept. and having a conversation about how to approach the issue with my roommie that I otherwise adore. I felt better after the chat and put on my game face for the excursion determined to still have a great time.

I had a GREAT time. It was a photo safari excursion where the guides actually bait the water with herring so that the eagles will dive down right next to the boat so that we could photograph them. WOW. Unfortunately eagles are really fast so I got one amazing photo (slightly out of focus) of an eagle in flight close up and some way off in the distance. My 300 mm zoom lens on a 1.6x crop camera gave me some pretty good distance to my zoom and I was impressed with the detail in a bunch of my shots. We were on a moving vessel but having image stabilization means I can shoot most photos without a tripod and they still turn out good. The trip started out rainy but after we got out to where we were eagle watching the clouds broke and the sun came out. For the rest of the day in Ketchikan it was brilliantly sunny. I loved it!

Other things I did and saw in Ketchikan -- the tour went from being on the water to a place called Potlatch Park where native Tlingit totem carvers work at building up the totem collection to tell the native stories to preserve the history of their people. Totems are not religious objects, they are used to tell the history of a people group that has only had a written language since the 50’s and were also used to decorate the supporting poles of the long houses they would winter in. Any ways, at Potlatch Park there is currently the only female master level carver in Southeastern Alaska. She demonstrated her techniques and it was really fascinating. At her level of skill she will earn around 1200.00 per sq. foot of totem. Wow! One pole takes about a year and is 20 feet high or so depending on the stories being told.

After the tour I walked around in town and went to the park with the water fountain, only this week it was sunny instead of rainy like the picture I shared last week in the Facebook album. After that I walked up a road I hadn’t visited before and wound my way around to Cape Fox Lodge where there is a cable car that goes up the side of the mountain to the Lodge. At the top is the hotel and some totems. I ate a sandwich that I bought in town up there and then hiked down. On the way down I took a portrait of a house cat lounging in the grass with my telephoto zoom lens up close. It took a nice portrait! :)

Then I walked to a bridge near Creek Street and locals were salmon fishing there. The day before there had been the conclusion of the annual fishing derby where someone caught a winning fish weighing in around 42 lbs. They were still fishing today and one guy had a huge king salmon on his line and it kept jumping up in the air. I had my telephoto lens on the camera still at that point so I kept missing the shot because it would jump just outside the view of the lens. Disappointing for sure. I need to keep working on the best way to capture action shots because that happened while trying to capture the eagles this morning as well.

While walking back towards the ship I happened to glance up at the second story of a building along the main road and saw two dogs in the window looking out. The hilarious thing was these two American Staffordshire Terriers were wearing sunglasses. I laughed so hard. They were just hanging out like it was nothing. After I kept walking 2 locals saw me laughing and told me the names of the two dogs and said there is actually usually a third one as well and that they are there in the window on any sunny day. I think it is a way for the local family to get a reputation with the tourists, but whatever the case it was really cute and funny. I of course snapped a few cute poses and put my favorite on Facebook for this week.

I then went into a tourist shop (places I usually avoid like the plague) and bought a cheap Alaska Inside Passage t-shirt for 3.99. If I have a shirt that lists all the ports I am allowed to wear that and jeans as my uniform on the first night of the cruise for the Welcome Aboard theme rather than my usual uniform. I am all about getting out of the uniform and putting on theme wear. I wish we had comfy theme wear every night, but alas we do not. Pretty close though. :)

Tonight’s theme was Pirate Night. Love this night. We take the kids on a scavenger hunt around the ship to find treasure. Our kids this week are such great sports in having 3 year olds in with the 8-10 year olds. The older ones look out for the younger ones and the younger ones love being taken care of by the older ones. They are too cute!

My supervisor came out when the treasure was found, we hide it right near her office, and she interacted with the kids a bit. It was too cute, I loved it. After hours I went by the office and found a note from her in my mailbox that was very sweet and encouraging thanking me for the way I made the activity so special for the kids and that she really appreciated how I worked with them. I love her, she is such an encouraging boss.

Tuesday June 12: Last Sea Day

Today the seas were a bit choppy, but not too horrible. I watched Boomerang channel in the teens room waiting for my kids to show up, last night was hour forward so the kids never arrive very early because they think it’s still 9 am when it’s actually 10 am. Makes for an easy morning for me. Then we had Play Station time, a craft and then we all went downstairs for the cooking class at 11 am.

I’m going to really miss this group of kids. All week the parents have been SO GREAT. They are constantly telling me how much the kids love coming up to Club HAL and how much they love hanging out with me. That is so encouraging to hear! I love my job and love kids who can have a great time but still behave and be controlled. I kept seeing all of them in the different ports and they’d get so excited to see me and I’d hang out with them for a while, it was really neat.

Our final party was a huge hit overall until Jared had an incident with Jack and Diermud. All I had to do though was say that Jack hurt Jared’s feelings and because of that Jared had left the party to go to the Play Station room and he made up an excuse for why he needed to leave the room. I knew that he would use that time to go an apologize and he did. When he came back into the room Jared came with him and he had another reason for why they were both together. None of the other kids knew what had happened and it was resolved. Very thoughtful and resourceful of Jack, I knew he hadn’t done anything mean on purpose, it was simply a misunderstanding. Truly great kids.

After the party ended I found some lost and found items and so Liz and I went room to room delivering these items back to the kids. The families were so grateful, but one room no one was around and the lost item was a highly prized stuffed bear that walked and growled. Shannon had been SO EXCITED to show off this bear at the party so I knew she would definitely want it back. After 20 minutes of not finding her and finishing our other errands we went back to Club HAL to finish cleaning up and I called the room and left a message that we’d take the bear to the front desk. Well, lo and behold she and her mom go walking in through the other door and we quickly run into the room to give her the bear (she’s 8). She was absolutely in tears, frantic that she’d lost it for good and so terribly upset. I gave her a huge hug and apologized that we hadn’t been in the room earlier when they were back to look for it and that we had actually spent all that time trying to find HER. I knew how it meant to her and that we were definitely not going to let her go home without it. That made her smile through her tears and she left a very happy girl. Whew! :) As they used to say in the Little House on the Prairie “Alls well that ends well”.

This was a very very very very very fun group of kids and I definitely hope to keep having such great groups this summer.

I hope to hear from you, I miss you all and thanks for checking out my update for this week. Sorry it’s a bit late, we only have 2 staff so I really don’t get any free time (unless I’m in a port and the Shore Excursions guy has a crush on me so I keep getting on really great excursions that eat up my port times).

Catch up with you again next week!
T

Cruise 2 of 14: May 23 - June 6, 2007

Tuesday May 29th: Day 7 - At Sea

Each week I will post a link from my Facebook site that can hold up to 60 pics per album. I will still post my few favorites here on the blog.

For an album of pics for this cruise go to:
http://uwm.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26149&l=4e92f&id=705660152

This is our final sea day for this first cruise, I can’t believe how quickly a week goes by when you’re having fun. I’m so glad that I work here instead of simply vacationing, because then my cruising fun is just beginning rather than already ending.

I took my seasickness combo of half a pill and wore my wristbands again today and it seems to really do the trick thus far. Yay!

The kids had a cooking class with Chef Valentine in the Culinary Arts Center today and we watched them made creations from dough that are then baked and displayed. Things like iguanas, snakes, baskets of flowers, turtles, and my favorite the frogs, were really not that difficult to make and they turned out so cute. These items are baked until they are hard as rocks and then a light glaze put on them to make them shine and used for decoration on the serving lines. The kids each got their own bits of dough to make stuff with as well and then we made ice cream sandwiches from scratch and of COURSE got to eat them. The parents were so happy that we had those delicacies right before lunch too!

The evening theme night was PJ night farewell party. We wore our PJ’s and name tags, had a pillow fight and played lots of fun games. As I was going to work tonight I heard a guest make a very disgusted comment about how people just don’t care how they go out in public anymore, just look a grown adult wearing their pajamas like it’s no big deal. I didn’t say anything, as they had already passed me, but simply chuckled as we are so often so quick to judge what we don’t know. She didn’t know that that was actually my UNIFORM for the night :)

Cruise 2 of 14: May 23 - June 6, 2007

Wednesday May 30th: Day 1 - Vancouver, B.C.

This morning, being the cheery morning person that I am, I had the distinct privilege of helping the guest as they were disembarking at 7:30 am. I enjoyed the job and the guests appreciated a smiling face on the gangway at that hour of the morning. Many others stay out until all hours at the bar and then groan over morning gangway. Seeing as how I am dead tired by the time my 10 pm shift is over and go straight to bed I am able to get up and be perky in the early morning. This worked in my favor as Vancouver was in the 80’s and gorgeously sunny this week and after my a.m. shift I was able to get off for several hours before heading back for gangway duty at 2 p.m. for embarking passengers.

I walked around Canada Place, the cruise terminal and shops, but didn’t venture too far today as I didn’t know where things were. Most things that I will need shopping wise are within a few blocks of Canada Place, which is nice because Seattle was a 10-15 min. cab ride from the terminal to downtown.

I stopped at a small corner bakery cafe and grabbed a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, granola and yogurt. I then went around and took pictures of Canada Place and it’s sails and other things of interest in the immediate vicinity. In the future I want to venture further away to Stanley Park and Kitsilano Beach (where the movie actors live!). Both of those destinations are quite close to downtown. The park I believe is within 2 miles and I can walk there, the beach is a short cab ride away across a very long bridge that spans the channel the ships all come in to port under. I don’t know if pedestrians are allowed on the bridge or not. I may be able to ride the bus there as well, but you have to have Canadian money to do so (much cheaper than a cab though) so I may need to exchange a little bit of money and grab a bus schedule.

Oh yeah, I managed to find a lens cap for my camera lens, after my original one blew into the water in Skagway on Saturday. That made me feel better and willing to take my camera out and about again.

Gangway duty went smoothly, I really really like this terminal building in Vancouver, so much nicer than Seattle’s. Boat drill was a blast, the people all stand huddled so tightly together for about 20 minutes in misery so to the dismay of the boat commanders I livened up the crowd as I was searching for any children without safety number wristbands. Each time I walked up or back I’d incite them to do the Wave or crack jokes. This relaxed some of them a bit and helped them to smile in a claustrophobic environment.

We met a few kids during our welcome meeting, but there just aren’t that many kids on board this week. It’ll be interesting to see how many actually show up in Club HAL and what their ages are.

I had exactly 2 kids show up tonight for the Welcome Aboard party from 8-10pm. One boy is named Isak from Puerto Rico, he’s 9 and his English reading and speaking skills are impeccable. I was super impressed and he is a really fun kids so far. Another girl showed up, 11 years old, named Cate and she was really nice as well. She will be getting off in Skagway to continue her vacation via land tour up to Denali. That is the weirdest thing about this itinerary is we have people going and coming half way through.

Thursday May 31st: Day 2 - First Sea Day

I knew from last week to plan ahead this week for seasickness. I am working all alone in my room this week and couldn’t be down for the count, so I used my so far successful remedy and took the half pill as soon as I got up. I now know it takes my body 30-60 min. to fully appreciate the effects of the pill so I allotted an extra half hour before needing to go upstairs. I took the pill and then laid on the floor in my room for 30 minutes before getting ready for work. That took the edge off enough to get ready. By the time the kids were coming up for activities at 9 am I was feeling pretty perky overall. The seas on this itinerary tend to calm down from about 11:30 am to about 9:00 pm which works out perfect so that I can eat lunch and dinner and only have to clean basically when it starts in again and then I go to bed. Tonight though having taken the pill I was in much better shape then last week and made it through with flying colors. :) Yay!

Friday June 1st: Day 3 - Juneau, AK

I am on IPM today so after running activities for the kids this morning I did a load of laundry, went up to the Oasis deck for a little while and enjoyed the warm sunshine, then went into the Loft (teen room) and caught up on emails. I found that if I typed everything that I wanted to send off and then prop my laptop in the porthole long enough to get a dockside wi-fi signal to send I could go back and forth getting some stuff updated that I wanted to do. That worked pretty slick. I didn’t want to sit and prop it there the entire time, so being able to work on stuff and then just put it up there to send/receive worked out just right. Thankfully the windows are slightly tinted from the outside or the guest walking by the railing would have thought it a little odd. I didn’t care, after using an entire internet card last week I needed to grab a little free wi-fi when I could. :) Oh, and to clarify, my donation statements last week were meant to be taken as a joke (Mom thought I should clarify that as she claims my years working for the Salvation Army were a little too ingrained and she thought I was serious!!! he-he-he!). Hopefully you thought it lighthearted in the manner in which it was written.

I got to host the guest artists this evening when they came on board from 5:30-8:00 pm. That will be a weekly job for whoever is assigned to IPM in Juneau. They were very nice and host classes on different things from making native Alaskan ceremonial costumes to beading or culture of the Tlingit tribes in the area.

Club HAL’s theme night tonight was Brave the Night. I revived that from last year as it was my favorite night. The kids have to do different challenges like on Survivor and the team with the most points wins and they get a prize. We had five attend and that was a pretty good turn out. Last night was supposed to be Mystery Spy Night and only one girl showed up so we did different card tricks and such for each other. For the theme tonight I needed some different items from different departments and managed to use my positive attitude and smiling face to get each of the things I needed. It’s amazing how far a smile and kind word go in this world, more people ought to try it--they’d be amazed by the results.

Saturday June 2nd: Day 4 - Skagway, AK

Today was a weird day, we were the only ship in Skagway (last week we were one of three) and so the town felt sort of deserted. I got off the ship around 9:30 am and didn’t have any definite plans other than to go for a nice long walk and see what I could see. On the way out of town (7 blocks long and 4 blocks wide) I stopped at the original Skaguay depot building which is not an organic and natural food outpost. I bought a most delicious nectarine and it was very very juicy and sweet. Organic produce always is so amazing compared to non-organic in flavor. I then just started walking. I walked past the garden and restaurant I went to last week. I walked about 6 miles around curvy bends and up a steep 2 lane highway that leads to the next town over. I was hoping to get up high enough to have a scenic lookout. After walking for about and hour and a half though I didn’t want to go any higher and not be able to make it all the way back to the ship. Skagway is so small they don’t have cabs if you get to tired to walk, so I would have had to make it back somehow. So at the point I knew I shouldn’t climb any further I turned around and had a downhill trek back to town - much much easier and less tiring of course.

Along the way I saw a tree growing out of the side of some sheer rock. I call that photo “Determination”. I walked through a small cemetery to learn the stories of the local folks and saw some interesting things there. Walking back into town I was getting really hungry and love to try local flavors, but Skagway residents earn all of their annual income during the summer months so the prices were totally outlandish. Well, ok not outlandish compared to going out for a really nice dinner in a metropolitan area (seafood, steak, etc.) but when halibut fish and chips costs $18.50 there is something wrong. I knew that they would be serving salmon for dinner on the ship and so I grudgingly got back on, careful not to lose any camera parts on the way back inside, and put on my uniform to go have dinner in the Lido for free. It was good, probably as good or better than anything I would have had off the ship so it turned out fine.

Tonight’s theme was Country Carnival, so after dinner I donned my country outfit and went upstairs to set up the room with games and such. One of my older tweens came up early to see if I was around and helped me set up. Her name is Cassie and she has 2 younger sisters also in my room and she likes to find time away from them when she can. The youngest is 5 and so she ends up being the obligatory big sister/baby sitter quite often it seems. We had a good time together and then the other kids came for the carnival games a little later on.

Each night after I clean up I take the leftover snacks down to the P.O. bar which is for the international crew (Filipino and Indonesian, plus all other crew can hang out there too but most others hang out in the Officers Bar or OB). Because we get such great snacks in Club HAL I hate to waste them and so when the PO guys see me coming they get excited wanting to know what snacks I’m bringing them. Last night I had a really nice fruit platter with kiwi, strawberries, grapes, melons, etc. Tonight I have bags of popcorn and a really fancy cheese platter, the dancers on board saw the cheese and went crazy. We really get the munchies when food is only available during set hours, unlike home where you can grab a snack whenever. It must be psychological because at home I hardly ever snack but on the ship I get ravenous.

Sunday June 3rd: Day 4 - Glacier Bay National Park

Glacier Bay is always such a beautifully scenic day, this summer I don’t get to really appreciate it though. We keep the kids indoors doing morning activities and then during lunch, when I would go and take pictures last summer, we have our planning meeting for the upcoming cruise. Oh well. These past two Sundays have been raining anyway. If we hit a gorgeous day with blue sky and sunshine I need to skip lunch and just go out on deck and grab a few photos. Hopefully I can do that before all the snow melts, because it is so much more awe inspiring with all the glacial ice in the water and snow on the peaks.

I had a parent get mad at me today because I wasn’t specifically paying every second of attention to her 4 year old child who has the attention span of about 2 minutes and is then ready for another activity. We’ve tried to patiently explain to her that Club HAL isn’t a daycare or baby-sitting service, it is organized group activities. If a child cannot participate in a group setting or isn’t interested in a particular activity on the schedule then they should come at a time when they can participate or do want to do an activity. It isn’t fair to the rest of the kids who are there for the planned event to have my attention constantly drifting to the one child who wants to do his own thing. She didn’t really like that, actually she was quite disgusted with us, but Dad got it and hopefully will get her to understand that we aren’t being mean or discriminating against her children.

I got to perform in Master Chef Dinner again this evening. It may be the last time I do it this summer as our kid counts are going to soar after next week. Next week I have 14 tweens and 9 kids on the roster and there are 6 teens on the roster. So, if the teens start showing up for activities then I’ll have all the young’uns to myself. We are discussing moving mature tweens up in programming if we don’t have 16 and 17 year olds coming to activities. If it is mainly 13 and 14 year olds then it isn’t a problem to include a few 12 year olds and possibly 11 year olds so that the programming geared for 3-7’s won’t be too young for them. I try hard to balance it according to the maturity level of the majority of kids and this week it’s gone pretty well over all. The oldest attendee has 5 and 9 year old sisters, so she is already used to doing stuff with young children. The other older tween likes to still play like a kid, so it works out good.

The kids got to watch the newer Disney Pixar movie “Cars” while I was doing the Master Chef Dinner. I really like that movie. It has stuff in it for every age and I find myself crying at the end even though I’ve seen it now more than once. It has a lot of good messages geared for different ages and it is a good pick for whole family viewing.

We reordered our theme nights this week so that Pirate Night is tomorrow night. That works out good so that Pirate Night and Dessert Extravaganza in the Lido aren’t on the same night. Our treasure hunt clues tend to disappear when it lands on Dessert Extravaganza-Not COOL. Another benefit to having Master Chef and Pirate night on two separate nights is I only have to wear my uniform two nights during the cruise for night time programming. I always love wearing something besides Khaki, navy and white tennis shoes. Thursday I wear black spy clothes, Saturday I wear jeans and plaid country clothes, tonight for Master Chef is black pj/exercise pants, comfy black slip ons, and the chef hat and jacket, tomorrow pirate wear which is also comfy, Tuesday night I’ll again wear pj’s and my comfy slip ons. Got to love that!

Monday June 4th: Day 6 - Ketchikan, AK

We don’t dock (no tendering this week!) until 10:00 am, so I got to sleep until 9 am this morning. That was good, I was so tired after having a full sea day and doing Master Chef Dinner that I fell asleep around 11 pm and woke up at 9 am, so I got around 10 hours of sleep. I need to get a lot of rest because at least three of the crew are down with Norwalk like symptoms and are on quarantine from the Engine Dept. Yikes. So far the count isn’t high enough to bring us into Code Red and we are sanitizing everything extra carefully to hopefully stay out of Red. That is NO FUN! The sick crew are also going through extra long quarantines, 72 hours after the LAST time they got sick, instead of 24 hours from the 1st time they got sick, to ensure that others aren’t infected if possible.

I got off the ship at 11:15 am with a lady named Moira who is married to the Chief Security Officer. I may have mentioned her before, she is from Calgary Alberta Canada. She is a dear and I am so glad to have met her. We went around looking at things in Ketch today and then she got back on board at 2 pm to meet up with her hubby for his couple hours off in port. I then went and looked in some of the shops. She is specifically wanting an Alaskan made sun catcher with a Forget-me-not, the Alaska state flower. Strangely enough you can find Eskimos, Huskies, Norther Lights, etc., but no Forget-me-nots. After wandering around in the shops I went for a long walk about 4 miles out of town.

I decided after dropping off Moira that I wanted to find Saxman Totem Park. It is one of the destinations for an excursion and I remembered last year people telling me how to get there. These small landlocked cities are really hard to get lost in as the road only goes about 8 miles one direction, 18 the other and there is only one main road each way with a few side streets up in the hills. I did in fact find the Totem Park and it was very interesting. I didn’t spend any time looking around when I got there though as it was raining all day and was getting later in the afternoon. I called up the trusty cab company, they have very nice cabbies in Ketch that love to also play tour guide as they drive, to get me back to the ship on time. I had two hours but after walking all day I was pretty tired and didn’t want to have to worry about getting an overuse injury in my knees (been there done that and it’s no fun - couldn’t walk properly for 6 months because of one over strenuous hike summer of 2005) so I called for a ride and 7 minutes later they pulled up. Now that I know where it is it won’t seem so far next time, so if the day is nice I’ll walk that way immediately and then have plenty of time to enjoy the park and walk back to the ship. I think it’s either as far or maybe even closer than Walmart, which is 5 miles the opposite direction from downtown.

Tonight’s theme was Pirate Night and it was so nice to have a good pirate costume this year. The week before leaving Milwaukee I went thrift shopping and found some amazing deals at a 1.99 store. I needed khaki’s for work and also searched for theme wear. I found the perfect shirt for a pirate shirt, a striped sash, I already owned black pirate pants and black shoes, the pirate patch elastic strap needed lengthening with elastic from the craft store, and I owned a bandana. When I walked into the Cruise Director’s office this evening they all thought I looked super cute. Yay!! How fun.

The kids looked cute too in their pirate hats and face paint. We went on our treasure hunt around the ship, but there actually weren’t too many people out and about to say “Aaaaargh” and “Ay ay Captain” to. Oh well, next week! :)

That is my update for this week. I’ll fill you in on the last sea day and Vancouver in the next entry. Tonight is hour forward night as we always gain an hour going into Alaska and lose an hour coming back to our home port. So I’ll sign off now as it is 12:32 am PST Thursday morning after hour forward adjustment in time.

I hope that you had a joyous week, miss you all.
Be blessed,
T